


lost and found

by The_IPRE



Category: Campaign (Podcast)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Missed Connections
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:07:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29017905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_IPRE/pseuds/The_IPRE
Summary: five times travis and margaret's paths crossed, and one time they held on
Relationships: Margaret/Travis Matagot
Comments: 8
Kudos: 7





	lost and found

**Author's Note:**

> been working on this since 91 dropped, shoutout to the uwuru for feeding the changelily brainrot <3

It has been ten years since William watched Margaret slip away, pulled into the undertow of the river and out of his treacherous hands. Ten years of wandering through his life, ten years of false names and false friends and just plain falsehoods. 

Ten years of seeing Margaret everywhere he goes, no matter how far he runs from the forest.

He hears a laugh in a crowded inn and whips his head around so fast it hurts, but the pain is nothing compared to the world reasserting itself back around him. The laugh was too high, of course, really not all that much like Margaret’s now that he thinks about it. Besides, even if the laughs were identical, it still wouldn’t have been her’s.

William loosens his white-knuckled grip on his maelstrom, reminds himself once more that Margaret is dead, and leaves the crushing room behind.

It is a few years later, and he is at a market when he catches sight of long, curling hair, mahogany-dark and so familiar his ribs ache. The woman tosses her head and William is shaken out of his reverie by the strange tic, one that he had never seen on his Margaret. He tucks the stall-keeper’s watch into his palm, reminds himself that Margaret is dead, and slinks through the crowd.

The years begin to stack, and William forces himself to stop looking for ghosts. He tightens his shoulders against familiar voices and crushes the hope in his chest when he catches glimpses of white and green and gray.

With every footfall, he reminds himself: Margaret is dead.

* * *

Margaret enjoys being around people.

This is a useful skill for any Black Lily to have, of course, but the cold and silent waves seem that much closer when she is alone, and so she finds herself enjoying the company of others more often than not.

She has not been in this town for long, but already she has found her way to an illimat parlor. The noise is comforting, voices rising and falling around the clack of okuses and slosh of drinks, the room alive in every sense of the word. 

The person across from her is tall and broad and almost transparent in the flickering candlelight, and the seasons change as they take with a few cards with a fool.

Their look of concentration falls at the cock of Margaret’s head, and she clears the final field and takes its luminary with a smile. 

That last point from the Maiden is enough to win her the game, and her competitor passes over a few coins with a begrudging grin and a _good game_ , thoughtlessly working their okus between their fingers.

Margaret stands, happiness warm on her face as she tucks the bits into her pocket. Before she can step away from the table someone knocks their shoulder into hers, and she lets out a noise of surprise. 

The man’s silver hair masks his face, long enough to brush his chin as he raises a hand in a loose apology, and his _sorry_ is swung in a way to make sure that they both know she won’t buy it.

Margaret narrows her eyes at the man as he leaves, feeling suddenly as though there is a missing piece she is failing to see, foot fallen through a missing step in the universe. As someone whose job largely relies on seeing things about people that are not meant to be seen, it is an unfamiliar feeling. 

She brushes the man’s voice out of her mind as she turns to go her separate way, planning on buying a drink for her previous competitor, but the toe of her boot catches when she moves. 

An illimat cloth lays across her shoe, blue and green with seasons chased by white animals. She looks back to where the stranger left, trying to pick out the shock of silver amongst the many heads filling the room, but he is long vanished into the crowd.

With a frown, she picks up the fabric. The details of it are lovely, but she knows better than to be too caught up by the mystery of a stranger and in so doing, lose sight of those right in front of her. 

Folding the cloth, she tucks it in a pocket and moves to the bar, knowing that there are many games yet to be played.

After all, the night has only just begun.

* * *

Trevor McRib knows that he should have chosen a different alias. 

He wears every name with style and aplomb, of course, and yet this one is a bit too rough and tumble for the elegant masquerade ball that he has found himself attending.

Still, his outfit more than makes up for it, lace at the edges of his coat and so much lining his tails that he almost does look like a peacock. The click of his short heels is lost to the noise of the room – as is the jangle of the pilfered jewelry filling his pockets – and his feathered mask takes up enough of his face that he is doubtful anyone would be able to identify him afterwards.

The amount of free alcohol around the room will also probably help with that as much as the mask, if he’s being honest – which he rarely is – but Trevor McRib never downplays his own efforts. 

Out on the dance floor, gloved hands rest against gloved hands. Perhaps it is not the best part of the party for lifting jewelry, but he has earned some fun for himself outside of the grift. 

It’s all posturing, faces hidden behind masks and steps that everyone must pretend they had to put no effort into learning, but if pressed, he would admit that the swirling people provide their own sort of rush. The thrill of closeness without ever making contact, the threat of discovery with every too emphatic spin, it’s all nothing, but it’s a _fun_ nothing.

The music swells and the partners change, and for a moment the man calling himself Trevor McRib finds himself staring into the eyes of a ghost.

His hand rests against hers through the layers of their gloves, lifted in the air between them, and her warm eyes shine out from behind the ivory of her mask. Dark hair held back with flowers and a slight smile that makes him ache, white and green and gray dress spinning out against the dance floor. 

His step falters against the strains of music tangling the air and the woman staggers her step as well, light and intentional and making the misstep a shared one.

There is silence between them for a few moments, hand light against hand as he reminds himself that Margaret is dead, Margaret is dead, _Margaret is dead_ , the words thudding with his pulse as the music continues to play as though nothing has changed.

The measure ends and partners switch once more, and Trevor McRib works his way to the door, no longer quite so interested in all of the sparkling things that the party may have to offer.

It is not long before he rids himself of this name just like the others, before the man once known as William will pick up another name that he will force to fit.

* * *

The breeze is cool as Margaret sits on a balcony overlooking the river, a graceful metal table between herself and her current client. The conversation is pleasant and the sun is bright overhead, and she pays no mind to the scudding whitecaps on the water below.

She smiles over her cup of tea at Fletcher, nails scraping against the ceramic as she revels in the simple joys of existing. 

Glancing out over the world, Margaret catches sight of a stranger across the river that makes her blood go cold. 

His coat flares out behind him and his hair is in tangles and she would swear against everything else that she knows him, would bet her lily that she knows this man. The cold that has followed through her entire life swells up all at once, _deja vu_ drowning her on dry land.

The man tucks his head and disappears into the crowd and Margaret can’t stop herself from searching for that glint of silver hair, a desperation she can’t name threaded through her ribs.

In her periphery, across the table, back in the real and present moment, there is movement. Margaret blinks, drawing in a shaky breath, and looks to see how Fletcher has split a bread roll and holds out half to her with a smile.

Without thinking, Margaret mirrors the smile, taking the offered bread.

Margaret has met a number of people in her life. After all, she isn’t as young as she looks. Margaret has seen a good deal of faces, and it would be foolish to assume that every familiar face was an important one.

Flexing her fingers, Margaret wills away the phantom grip against her hand and slides back into conversation without a second thought.

At least, not one that she shares.

* * *

Travis Matagot doesn’t have a hand, and that’s a problem. 

It’s a problem that he will blame on Gable – already is blaming on Gable – but the pain in his stump is one that is nothing like any pain he has experienced in the past two hundred years.

He has lost so much, wings and fingers and everything in between, but nothing has ached like this. 

Nothing has been so undeniably _gone_ as this. Nothing tangible, anyway, although he shoves that memory to the untidy corner of his mind where he sticks all of his thoughts about Margaret.

Travis stands outside the shrine to the Luminaries, Gable finally convinced to leave him alone, and takes a breath.

The air is cold in his lungs, rain-wet and aching. The sounds of festivities from Nordia proper are quieter here, yielding to the solemnity of this place, and it makes Travis want to crawl out of his bones, to run away to somewhere that is alive and inconsequential.

As good as he is at running, he can’t escape the pain that pulls at where his hand once was, and so he heads into the quiet.

When Travis enters the shrine, his heart stops in his chest.

Long, curling hair. A dress that is green and white and gray and so familiar he can’t close his eyes to it, as much as he might want to.

A ghost. A woman, standing before him in the flesh. _Margaret_.

He knows that it is not her, as certain as he has been every other time he has seen her scattered across Spéir.

He can’t help but call to her anyway.

* * *

The thread on Margaret’s finger has been tightening.

She knows that Travis, _her William_ , has been trying to find her, and she has been sure to give him a challenge; after all, their relationship has never been without a few trials. This time, they are on Margaret’s terms, carving her name into tavern tables underneath his only a hundred years too late, leaving breadcrumbs that say _I know you are looking for me. You’ll find me when I’m ready_. 

Days passed, and she processed the sudden truth that she had learned. Weeks passed, and she once more learned who _Margaret_ was. One day, she knew she was ready for the chase to stop.

She sent a letter to the Uhuru, tied in one of her ribbons and sealed with a kiss. An invitation to a masquerade; an invitation to find her.

Margaret dances, in the meantime, suit tailored in green and white and gray. She bows and curtseys as she is ought to, but can’t help the way her gaze searches the room, can’t control the hope that lights her nerves. 

The tightening of the thread on her finger is the only warning she gets before she is once more standing face to face with Travis Matagot, eyes glittering behind his white coyote mask.

“It’s been a while,” Margaret says, and leads them in a spin as the music swells.

“I hadn’t noticed,” Travis says, and his voice is unbearably soft when he follows.

“Some might say that you were hardly trying.”

“Well, some might say that you were making it difficult on purpose, honestly, I feel like it’s pretty up to interpretation.”

Margaret sweeps him into a dip and feels the catch of his breath. “I’m glad you’re here, Travis.”

He swallows, and there is the light brush of his fingers moving her hair off of her shoulder. “I missed you, Margaret.” His voice holds her name like a precious thing, and she knows beyond doubt that he remembers her. 

She pulls him back up and Travis’s hand settles at her waist, familiar in a way that carries years behind it.

He holds himself heartbreakingly still as she settles her hand against his cheek. “I’ve missed you too, William.”

The world holds its breath at that, music and dancing glittering brilliant and distant beyond the quiet that the lovers have made, once more looking into each other’s eyes, once more holding on.

This time, they will not let go.

Travis takes a cracked inhale, hearing his name again, and lets himself lean into her touch. 

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to leave a comment or kudos, or come talk to me on tumblr at [the-ipre](https://the-ipre.tumblr.com)!


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